DMDircthe intelligent IRC client

After nearly a year, we have just released DMDirc 0.6.3m1, with over 1000 commits resulting in over 200 feature additions, bug fixes and other changes, including:

• A redesign of the preferences dialog
• Improved support for SSL certficates (both client and server)
• Support for SOCKS proxies
• Ability to automatically restart the client after installing updates
• Ability for plugins to specify ’services’ that they provide/require.
• Ability for plugins to export (share) methods with each other
• Improved MDI support
• A more robust DCC plugin
• Moving of the UI to a plugin, allowing for it to be updated separately from the main client

DMDirc 0.6.3m1 is one of our “milestone” releases of the 0.6.3 branch. These milestone releases were a (somewhat failed) attempt to release more often than we have in the past. We periodically decide to stop working on any new features and tidy up the current code-base into a release-ready state to allow users of the stable branch of the client to get some of the new features and fixes we have added sooner than having to wait for a full major release. It’s taken us almost a year to get to 0.6.3m1, so imagine how long it’d take if we went straight to 0.6.3 itself (which is approximately two milestones away)!

Users of previous versions of DMDirc should in the coming days be prompted by the automatic updater (if enabled) to update to the latest version of DMDirc. Alternatively, you can visit our downloads page to grab the latest version yourself.

With DMDirc 0.6.3m1 released we are now looking forward to our next milestone release, DMDirc 0.6.3m2. So far the issue list for this contains exciting additions such as improved handling of different charsets in channels, additional changes to plugins to try and make them less like black magic, server lists, improved support for netbooks (and other low-resolution systems), and a plethora of other bug fixes and general improvements to make the client nicer to use.

As always, we welcome bug reports and feature requests on our issue tracker, irc channel or as comments on this post. We’ve also recently launched an official twitter presence. DMDirc 0.6.3m1 continues to be supported on Linux, BSD, Solaris, OS X and Windows, as well as having a standalone Jar file for any other platforms that are not specifically supported.

Edit: It was recently brought to our attention that the OS X version previously released contained a bug that prevented the client from starting. This bug has now been fixed in the version available from Google code, we urge OS X users who previously downloaded and tried to use this version of DMDirc to try again with the fixed version.

After a long period of testing we have finally released DMDirc 0.6, and we think this is the best version of DMDirc to date with over 250 feature additions, bug fixes and other changes, including:

• Themes system revamp to allow multiple themes to be loaded at a time
• Completely redesigned Actions Manager and Actions Editor dialog (see our previous coverage of these)
• New installer for OS X
• The Linux installer can now be used for BSD-like OSs that have Java pre-installed
• The Linux installer can now be used on Open Solaris
• The automatic updater can now update plugins

As of DMDirc 0.6 we now support running on more platforms than before: we have installers for Linux, BSD, Solaris, OS X and Windows, as well as a standalone Jar file for any other platforms that we don’t currently provide an installer for.

Users of DMDirc 0.5.6 (or the recent unstable releases) should be prompted by the updater (if enabled) to update to the latest version of DMDirc. Alternatively, you can visit our downloads page to grab the latest version yourself.

With DMDirc 0.6 (finally!) released we are looking forward to our next release, DMDirc 0.6.3. This will include support for SOCKS proxies, improved support for SSL Servers, a nicer looking Preferences dialog, server lists and more.

As always, we welcome bug reports and feature requests on our issue tracker, irc channel or as comments on this post.

A security vulnerability has been discovered in DMDirc. The implementation of URL handlers allow specially crafted URLs to execute arbitrary programs on the host system. Only custom URL handlers (those listed as “custom commands” in the ‘URL Handlers’ section of the preferences panel) are vulnerable, and the user has to click on a malicious URL in order for the vulnerability to be exploited. The DMDirc developers have only been successful in using the vulnerability to launch argument-less programs on Linux, but we cannot guarantee that other platforms are not affected.

We have backported the fix for the exploit to the DMDirc 0.5 tree, and DMDirc 0.5.6 has now been released. We highly recommend that anyone using DMDirc 0.5.5 upgrade to DMDirc 0.5.6. Nightly builds of DMDirc up to and including the build released on the 22nd of May (designated revision 4055) are also vulnerable. A nightly build containing the vulnerability fix will be available for download tonight, and we highly recommend that anyone using DMDirc nightly builds upgrade as soon as it is available.

DMDirc 0.5.6 may be downloaded directly using the following links: Windows installer, Linux installer, Jar file.

If you have any questions, please feel free to join us in #DMDirc on Quakenet (irc.quakenet.org), or leave a comment here.

As you may have noticed if you’re a regular visitor, the DMDirc website has recently been given a lick of paint. There is now a common header across all of the DMDirc sites (the main website, addons site, bug tracker and blog), which allows easy navigation between all aspects of the DMDirc website, and is a lot better looking than the old header, too!

We have also relocated our subversion repository from its previous home at Google’s Project Hosting service, to our own server. We made this switch because of the fairly poor uptime of Google’s offering, and the seemingly random delays between commits being made and announcement e-mails being sent. If you have the DMDirc source code checked out from our subversion repository, follow the instructions here to migrate to the new repository.

We have just released version 0.5.5 of DMDirc. This release is an interim release between 0.5.1 and 0.6 to get some important features of 0.6 in use in the stable version.

Some of the main changes include:

• The new launchers which give the client the ability to update itself via the updater
• URL Handler to allow adding support for non-http links (Eg steam://, ftp://)
• Much improved plugin system (Plugins are now stored in jar files rather than loads of .class files)
• Many more, read the changelog for a full list.

The installer for DMDirc 0.5.5 can be downloaded for Windows or Linux.